Quote from: DeadUematsu;386582The idea that RPGs must have the GM be the leader is bogus, the idea that a RPG group has to have a leader is even more bogus.

Picked last in physical education classes, were we?

Quote from: Peregrin;386581"Man assaulted with pencils and spikey dice.  Details at 11."

Honestly, officer.  He tripped and fell.

Onto those pencils.

While he was trying to chew that Spelljammer book.

I swear.

If I'm running something chances are I have a pretty good idea about the setting already. It's these ideas that I draw my energy from, even as I feed it back into them.  I'm open to suggestions, but certain things just are not going to fly. You want to play a robot pirate- sure, I'm cool with that. You want to play an elf. You are out of luck, but we can probably find something in the game that satisfies your desires on some level. However, these aren't problems I really have to deal with, because the guys I've played with over the years have always made it quite clear that it was the way I did things and the settings I create that fire their interest. Theoretically final decisions are mine, but, really, things rarely (if ever) come to the point where I feel the need to assert that.

Look, if you want to run a game because the actual running of a game is FUN, great but I have a problem with a lot of people here essentially saying that they run games because they have control, it's thier way or the highway, etc. and that's the ultimate incentive. Which frankly explains why a lot of GMs just shouldn't run games and why the best GMs tend to be referee-like (and not the OD&D bastardization of the term).

Quote from: DeadUematsu;386593Look, if you want to run a game because the actual running of a game is FUN, great but I have a problem with a lot of people here essentially saying that they run games because they have control, it's thier way or the highway, etc. and that's the ultimate incentive. Which frankly explains why a lot of GMs just shouldn't run games and why the best GMs tend to be referee-like (and not the OD&D bastardization of the term).

Fortunately, no one here is saying that.  Perhaps you are seeing some strawmen that need vanquishing.

Quote from: Shazbot79;386559I can't help but wonder if people would be complaining about roles as much, if they were kept implicit rather than being made explicit like in 4E.

I don't necessarily see having tactical roles in a combat heavy, class based game like D&D is a problem. (of course, one doesn't have to play their game that way, but as monster XP is the primary source of character advancement according to the rules...one can infer that this is what the RAW inteds) The only problem that I see is when the actual class mechanics don't properly promote the intended role. At best, having a clearly defined tactical role gives newer players an idea of what the class is supposed to be good at.

I don't think that there are a lot of proponents of Class Systems who have a problem with classes being good at different things. That's kind of the point. Indeed, I actually think the concept of "roles" could have been salvaged somehow had they done things differently.

Imagine for example that the game had more roles than the expected number of players, and that each role had things that it actually had copyright on. Where you could look at peoples' class choices and determine that they didn't have a Scout or an Engineer on the team, so you could play one of those roles and automatically have something you could be contributing to the team that no one else had covered.

The problems with the way they implemented roles are numerous, and because they made them so central that was a huge problem. Here are the problems I see with the setup they went with:

• Too Few Roles. The default assumption is four roles and five players. So automatically you're left asking what the roles could possibly be for. Every party is supposed to double up on roles, so they can't provide any shtick protection for any player.
  
  
• Too Vaguely Defined. What the hell is a Controller supposed to do? How is a Striker different from any other character? What do Defenders Do? Stunlocks aren't the same thing as AoEs, everyone does Damage with every attack, and getting attacked by monsters is something that will happen to you regardless.
  
  
• No Role Protection. Even the few things we can hammer down like "Controllers get AoEs" and "Leaders get Healing" are routinely violated. Paladins heal left right and center, and they are "Defenders." Heck, they also get Area Effects. And they do damage.
  
  
• No Coherent Description. David Noonan cannot articulate what he wanted Roles to accomplish or mean. If you can't describe your design goals, it is folly to expect that you might ever accomplish them.

It's a well established problem that 4e classes don't have enough inter-party synergy, just as it's a well established problem that the roles simply aren't consistent or meaningful. But the reason why 4 Rangers and a Warlord or Five Paladins or 3 Wizards and 2 Clerics are so much better than "balanced" parties, is because the role system wasn't well laid out. The roles don't lay down protected shticks for how a player character would add to the whole of the party - each class instead just has some self-synergy floating in a void.

The end result is that a Fighter does about as much damage as a bow ranger but they have completely different and counter syngeristic fighting styles. Add a bow ranger to a party full of Fighters, and the rest of the party will be annoyed. The fact that the bow ranger is hanging back and avoiding melee means that the other party members are taking more fire - and he isn't putting enemies down any faster. Add a Fighter to a party of Bow Rangers, and he'll just die. Because while everyone else splits up and focuses fire on enemies that threaten to box the players in - the Fighter has to just charge into the fray. And so he'll get focus fired upon and torn to shreds. Paladins have very high defenses, can only "draw hate" from one enemy at a time, and do shitty damage. Add one to any balanced party and everyone groans. But a party of all Paladins is fucking cash. Each Paladin grabs hate off one enemy, all of them take forever to kill, and if one Paladin gets a run of bad luck for a while they can all pool their healing surges.

Because the Roles were so poorly designed and incompletely concepted, the optimum play is almost exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to be. We all know that you're supposed to want a party composed of a Fighter, a Cleric, a Wizard, a Rogue, and a Bard. And the Roles were supposed to make you actually want that. And if they had delivered that as a good strategy, we'd be OK with them. But they didn't.

We are angry at Roles not because they were pushed so hard, but because they don't do the things we were promised.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;386601Because the Roles were so poorly designed and incompletely concepted, the optimum play is almost exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to be. We all know that you're supposed to want a party composed of a Fighter, a Cleric, a Wizard, a Rogue, and a Bard. And the Roles were supposed to make you actually want that. And if they had delivered that as a good strategy, we'd be OK with them. But they didn't.

-Frank

In 3rd edition, the optimal party, especially at higher levels, was comprised entirely of spellcasters. I'm not saying that 4E is any better in this regard, but I don't think the two games are really very different.

If we look at the basis for the roles, the Fighter, Cleric, Wizard and Rogue...they have always been the purest expressions of Tank, Healer, controller, and damage/skill monkey. The other classic D&D classes were mash-ups of the basic four:

Ranger=Tank/Damage/Skill
Paladin=Tank/Healer
Druid=Healer/Controller/Tank
Bard=Skill/Controller/Healer

4E classes follow this route...classes have their primary roles, and a secondary role based on different class features.

But I agree that roles don't do what they're supposed to and that the lines between classes blur a little too much. For instance, strikers, leaders and defenders all have mechanics that promote their roles...controllers do not. Wizard's were first designed for AoE's and moving enemies...until someone figured out that their schtick should be action denial.

Now, if the classes are designed with more than four roles in mind, then what roles do you use? I suppose that you could use the monster roles: Leader, Brute, Soldier, Artillery, Lurker, Skirmisher and Controller. As for Engineer or scout, as you had previously mentioned, these roles are covered by skills.

Perhaps it would have been better for 4E classes to have been designed around archetypes rather than roles. Or at least, make the roles implicit and just state that Fighters are heavily armored weapon experts who stand down hordes of charging foes, Rogues are clever, quick, dirty back-alley fighters or acrobatic swashbucklers, Clerics are wrath of gods channeling buff-makers and healers, and Wizards are mysterious, puissant spellcasters that devastate small groups with powerful spells and change the rules of the battlefield.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;386601

• No Coherent Description. David Noonan cannot articulate what he wanted Roles to accomplish or mean. If you can't describe your design goals, it is folly to expect that you might ever accomplish them.

Heh.  A case of a tabletop rpg imitating a video game imitating a tabletop rpg, with something jumbled in the multiple translations.  :rolleyes:

Quote from: DeadUematsu;386593Look, if you want to run a game because the actual running of a game is FUN, great but I have a problem with a lot of people here essentially saying that they run games because they have control, it's thier way or the highway, etc. and that's the ultimate incentive.

Back in the day when I first started playing, quite a number of DMs of games I played in were hardcore "my way or the highway" types.  Typically these were guys who were quite a bit older than me, and were more interested in hex-and-chit type wargames (by Avalon Hill, SPI, etc ...) than tabletop rpgs at the time.

Quote from: DeadUematsu;386593Which frankly explains why a lot of GMs just shouldn't run games and why the best GMs tend to be referee-like (and not the OD&D bastardization of the term).

Usually I prefer not to DM.  A lot of the times when I was the DM, it was typically games where nobody was DM yet and none of the players were really interested in DM'ing and/or didn't know how to DM very well.

Quote from: Shazbot79;386614Now, if the classes are designed with more than four roles in mind, then what roles do you use? I suppose that you could use the monster roles: Leader, Brute, Soldier, Artillery, Lurker, Skirmisher and Controller. As for Engineer or scout, as you had previously mentioned, these roles are covered by skills.

You're making a game. Characters are represented by miniatures and fire is represented by an integer. You can have whatever fucking roles you want. All you have to do is clearly articulate what they can do that no one else can do and why a party would want someone who can do that. Seriously. The roles themselves could be colors or even numbers. If you say that only green characters get to do double damage to Ghosts and Demons, then grabbing a green character role would feel uniquely qualified to handle an exorcism encounter. In this case when I say it's arbitrary I mean that in the strictest mathematical sense, that you can really choose any variable you want and plug it right in.

But if it were up to me to design some roles? Sure. You want five PCs to be the norm, so you're going to want to be able to support a few more than that without doubling up. Further, you want each of the roles to synergize in an obvious manner with at least one other role. So something like this:

• Artillery characters deliver ranged attacks that soften up targets in ways that make them vulnerable to melee assaults. Example: Ranger.
  
• Brute characters deliver powerful melee attacks with poor accuracy that therefore benefits largely proportionately from buffs and debuffs. Example: Barbarian.
  
• Controller characters deny enemies mobility or actions, thereby acting as a multiplier on team defenses. Example: Illusionist.
  
• Curser characters cause enemies to have penalties to their actions, giving their party an edge over them. Example: Warlock.
  
• Engineer characters add or remove terrain from the battlefield, giving the party a positional advantage. Example: Druid.
  
• Lurker characters can inflict tremendous damage on enemies who are already impeded or engaged. Example: Rogue.
  
• Medic characters increase the benefit their team mates derive from their healing surges. Example: Cleric
  
• Shock characters can break whole units of enemies who have been previously softened up / bloodied. Example: Warlord

You know, off the top of my head. 8 Roles. You'd probably want more like 10 or 12. The point is that when you make the Medic role you make someone who is not mandatory (because people have Healing Surges anyway), and doesn't stack (because people only either get the enhanced healing surges or the normal kind). So if the party doesn't already have a Medic, you know that you could play one and be valued, but also that you don't have to play one, and that you would have a logical argument to tell someone to play something else and not horn in on your shtick if they wanted to play something you were already playing. And perhaps mos importantly of all: you know ahead of time that the all medic party is rather suboptimal.

But the really really key part of all of this is that designing a set of roles isn't particularly difficult. You simply have to have a solid idea of what you want your roles to mean and do.

-Frank

Quote from: Peregrin;386581"Man assaulted with pencils and spikey dice.  Details at 11."

It's better than getting assaulted by the Giff. Especially if sexually.

Quote from: thedungeondelver;386579No.

I dare you to come here and try that.

I have no idea how this will work out, but somehow I believe we'll have an opportunity to test my theory.

Quote from: Benoist;386510LOL Then they fail spectacularly. You can recreate 4e-like mechanics with the OGL and 3.5 SRD alone. Don't need no stickin' GSL for that.

They fail because you can't copyright mechanics.

Seanchai

Quote from: ggroy;386505Another thing which was probably unanticipated initially by WotC, is the DDI character builder having a huge hegemony over the market for 4E mechanics.  (This appears to be completely independent of the license).

Yeah. And I actually find it irritating.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;386659They fail because you can't copyright mechanics.

Seanchai

Absolutely.